† That ‘70s Show: In this Wall Street Journal op-ed Stanford University professor Ronald McKinnon, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institution for Economic Policy Research, warns that the economy is entering stagflation, in part because like the 1970s, we have “unduly easy U.S. monetary policy in conjunction with attempts to ‘talk’ the dollar down, leading to massive outflows of hot money that destabilized the monetary systems of America's trading partners.”

 

Meanwhile, if Senate Democrats get their way, those who earn more than $200K per year ($250K for couples) could lose 62 percent of their incomes to taxes. The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore does the math:

 

Today's top federal income tax rate is 35%. Almost all Democrats in Washington want to repeal the Bush tax cuts on those who make more than $250,000 and phase out certain deductions, so the effective income tax rate would rise to about 41.5%. The 3% millionaire surtax raises that rate to 44.5%.

 

But payroll taxes, which are income taxes on wages and salaries, must also be included in the equation. So we have to add about 2.5 percentage points for the payroll tax for Medicare (employee and employer share after business deductions), which was applied to all income without a ceiling in 1993 as part of the Clinton tax hike. … That brings the tax rate to 47%.

 

Then last year, as part of the down payment for ObamaCare, Congress snuck in an extra 0.9% Medicare surtax on "high-income earners," meaning any individual earning more than $200,000 or couples earning more than $250,000. This brings the total tax rate to 47.9%.

 

But that's not all. Several weeks ago, Mr. Obama raised the possibility of eliminating the income ceiling on the Social Security tax, now capped at $106,800 of earnings a year. … Subjecting all wage and salary income to Social Security taxes would add roughly 10.1 percentage points to the top tax rate. This takes the grand total tax rate on each additional dollar earned in America to about 58%.

 

Then we have to factor in state income taxes, which on average add after the deductions from the federal income tax roughly another four percentage points to the tax burden. So now on average we are at a tax rate of close to 62%.

 

Democrats have repeatedly stated they only intend to restore the tax rates that existed during the Clinton years. But after all these taxes on the "rich," we're headed back to the taxes that prevailed under Jimmy Carter, when the highest tax rate was 70%.

† Breasts Are Not Udders: New mothers in Canada are being “bombarded with the message that breast milk is crucial for their baby’s health,” thanks to “an aggressive” public-health campaign to boost the rate of breastfeeding, The Globe And Mail (Toronto) reports:

 

Some heretics … argue that the benefits of mother’s milk have been vastly overblown.

 

“The evidence to date suggests it probably doesn’t make much difference if you breastfeed,” says Joan Wolf, the author of a daring book called Is Breast Best? Ms. Wolf, an American academic, has examined the medical literature in detail. The science clearly shows that breastfeeding provides babies with some protection against gastrointestinal infections. Beyond that, the evidence for the sweeping claims made by the advocates for breast milk just doesn’t exist. …

 

Ms. Wolf is not alone in saying that moms are being misled. One of the world’s most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research is Michael Kramer, professor of pediatrics at McGill University. “The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date,” he says. The trouble is that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and neither side is being very scientific. “When it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational.” …

 

Joan Wolf, a writer on feminist subjects, argues that the cult of breastfeeding isn’t simply bad science. It’s profoundly oppressive to women. “Breastfeeding is part of what I call total motherhood, the belief that mothers are both capable of and responsible for preventing any imaginable risk to their babies and children,” she told one group of moms.” …

 

Nor is breastfeeding necessarily the blissful experience it’s supposed to be. Cracked nipples, sleep deprivation and mastitis are among the drawbacks. Plus, you’ve got to be on call pretty much full-time.

 

[Hat Tip: OpinionJournal]

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, A To Z Approach On Illegal Immigration In AZ): By a 5-3 vote, the Supreme Court upheld an AZ law that penalizes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, rejecting the argument that federal immigration law pre-empts the state statute. The ruling will make it easier for other states to impose their own laws to discourage hiring of illegal aliens, The National Law Journal reports:

 

As with most state-federal conflicts affecting business, the Chamber of Commerce pressed for a single federal regime on immigration instead of a patchwork of state laws, while rights groups argued the law would encourage employers to use ethnic stereotypes and discrimination to reject job applicants so as to avoid state sanctions. The Obama administration also opposed the law, asserting it disrupts the "careful balance" the federal law strikes.

 

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion, ruling that Legal Arizona Workers Act, under which the state can revoke the licenses of businesses that intentionally hire illegal aliens, can live side by side with federal law. The Court also upheld a provision of the Arizona law requiring companies to use the federal E-Verify system for checking the immigration status of job applicants.

 

Roberts based the pre-emption ruling on a clause of the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act that explicitly bars states from imposing separate criminal or civil sanctions for illegal hiring "other than through licensing or similar laws." … He noted the Arizona law tracks the federal definition of "unauthorized alien" and in other ways was crafted to be compatible with federal law. …

 

In contrast to its ruling on Arizona's SB 1070, the 9th Circuit had upheld the Arizona licensing law. The Supreme Court, which usually looks askance at decisions by that circuit, affirmed its decision today. Roberts rejected arguments that the Arizona statute would encourage discrimination by employers. The law has provisions giving first-time offenders a break, Roberts said, ensuring that only intentional repeat offenders would lose their licenses, which critics of the law had described as a "business death penalty."  … Joining Roberts were Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Only The Little People Pay Taxes): An investigation by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration found that 128 Internal Revenue Service employees fraudulently claimed the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit that was a component of the 2008 and 2009 economic stimulus packages, The Washington Times reports:

 

[The IRS employees] also made other claims that showed they either weren't first-time buyers or bought their homes outside the eligibility period for the credit. …

 

Meanwhile, one other IRS employee has been charged with using her position to try to help friends and relatives take advantage of the credit, which was signed by President Bush and then boosted under President Obama's 2009 stimulus law.

 

The IRS employees represented a small part of the total fraud in the program, which the inspector general said may have totaled more than a half-billion dollars overall. The inspector general said refundable tax credits, which transfer money back to taxpayers even when their tax liability is zero, "are targets for fraud."

 

Members of Congress who have oversight over the IRS said it's particularly egregious when the employees are caught cheating.

 

"It is incomprehensible that this many IRS employees improperly claimed the homebuyer tax credit," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. "These are the very people who are supposed to fairly enforce our tax laws, but seem to instead be taking advantage of that expertise for their own personal benefit."

 

It was easy for the IRS employees and tens of thousands of other taxpayers to abuse the refundable credit because the government sent out a check without first asking for documents proving eligibility.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Is Armenian Genocide Denial Good For The Jews?): In this Haaretz op-ed, both a former Knesset member and Minister of Education Yossi Sarid ruefully boasts about his “great success” that was 11 years in the making:  

 

Finally the Knesset plenum has enabled its Knesset Education Committee to conduct a public discussion of the genocide of the Armenian people. This is the discussion that was prevented for decades. For generations our governments firmly opposed it.

 

And this, of all governments, is the one that agreed. All the MKs present voted in favor, nobody was opposed, a unanimous decision that exudes a bad smell: too late, too ugly, yuck.

 

Zahava Gal-On, who returned to the Knesset with renewed strength, made a very nice speech. That is how she assumed her place in the relay race and the mission of her movement, the only one in Israel to avenge the honor of the Armenian people and demand that the historical lesson be learned from an orphaned genocide - victims without murderers. …

 

[T]he reason for the reversal is clear: The Israelis no longer favor the Turks, and are willing even to give up the charms and temptations of Antalya; that's how angry they are. …

 

Eleven years ago, on the 85th memorial day, I went to the Armenian church in Jerusalem, and as "a human being, as a Jew, as an Israeli and as the minister of education of the State of Israel" - that is how I introduced myself - I spoke about the historical justice that must be done, about the special commitment of the Jewish people to the Armenian people, and about my plan to teach our students the universal significance of genocide.

 

The scandal erupted immediately. My prime minister objected sharply, and Ehud Barak was swiftly joined by Shimon Peres: "These events," he said, "should be left to historians and not to politicians."

 

He was struck dumb last week, when the right thing was done for the wrong reason, and the voice of Shimon was not heard.

 

[Hat Tip: Keghart.com] 

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”): Monday’s Supreme Court ruling ordering CA state prisons to release 46,000 inmates to relieve overcrowding has law enforcement “bracing for the worst and hoping for the best,” as Merced County sheriff Mark Pazin put it, as the felons “unable to find jobs, return to their former way of life,”  The New York Times reports:

 

“This potential tsunami of inmates being released would have such an impact on local communities. Each of those who would be released have really earned their pedigree as a criminal. It could create real havoc,” [said Pazin, chairman of the state’s sheriffs’ association].

 

And since the court requires that the state reduce the population one way or another, California’s residents were greeting the decision with a mix of nervousness and fatalism. That anxiety is unlikely to be eased by the news that about 150 prisoners took part in a fight on Sunday in the dining hall at San Quentin State Prison in which four men were stabbed or slashed. The cause of the melee was under investigation.

 

Matthew Cate, the secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, called the court ruling disappointing because it did not recognize improvements the state had made over the last several years.

 

To ease prison overcrowding without unduly endangering the law-abiding populace, The Washington Times suggests that “the least the federal government can do is send those who are illegal aliens back over the border”:

 

An estimated 19,000 of California's convicts are illegal aliens, who cost the state approximately a billion dollars a year to incarcerate. In 2009, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested deporting illegals as a cost-saving measure. The state argued at the time that "These inmates are the federal government's responsibility and California taxpayers shouldn't be paying the bill." The federal government, however, was not as forthcoming as it might have been, and the plan didn't meet its potential. Given that the current choice may be between deporting convicted illegals or letting them roam free, the case for deportation is even stronger.

 

Illegal aliens are by definition engaged in criminal activity - namely being in the United States in violation of immigration laws. This point has carried little weight with the Justice Department, which has frowned on efforts at the state level to stem the illegal flood. But those illegals already convicted of unrelated crimes at the state level not only have no right to be in the country but have abused the privilege of being here. There is no rationale for letting them remain longer.

 

But it does not appear that prison officials will proceed in such a commonsensical fashion, much less with an abundance of caution, given that two days after the high court ruling a computer glitch has erroneously classified 450 inmates with "a high risk for violence" as unsupervised parolees, along with more than 1,000 additional prisoners at high risk of committing drug crimes, Los Angeles Times reports:

 

No attempt was made to return any of the offenders to state lockups or place them on supervised parole, said inspector general spokeswoman Renee Hansen.

 

All of the prisoners were placed on "non-revocable parole," whose participants are not required to report to parole officers and can be sent back to prison only if caught committing a crime. The program was started in January 2010 for inmates judged to be at very low risk of reoffending, leaving parole agents free to focus on supervising higher-risk parolees. …

 

State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), a former prosecutor who requested an investigation of the unsupervised-parole program, said the inspector general's report "confirms my worst fears" about it. …

 

Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to address overcrowding would shift tens of thousands of low-level offenders from prison to county custody. Counties would also supervise most low-risk parolees, like those in the non-revocable program.

 

But if the state can't properly identify which inmates qualify for an unsupervised parole program, Lieu said on Wednesday, "how can the public have confidence they can release 33,000 felons safely?"

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, Restorative Capital Punishment): AZ’s plans to execute Donald Edward Beaty, 56, for the rape  and murder of a 13-year-old newspaper carrier Christy Ann Fornoff in 1985 hit an eleventh-hour snag when the state Supreme Court ordered a temporary stay to hold a hearing to hear his lawyers’ objections over substituting pentobarbital for sodium thiopental in lethal injection protocol, Reuters reports:

 

Donald Edward Beaty, 56, died at 7:38 p.m. local time at a state prison in Florence, Arizona, officials said, in an execution delayed for more than nine hours by a legal dispute over one of the drugs used to kill him. …

 

[T]he court lifted the stay after conducting a special hearing on Wednesday morning, rejecting arguments that the state breached Beaty's constitutional due process rights and protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

 

Petitions to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court were unsuccessful. …

 

Beaty is the second inmate executed in Arizona this year, and the 26^th since the death penalty was reinstated there in 1992.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Never Mind Marxism. Will An Obama Administration Be Totalitarian?: Part II): Dane County Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi permanently enjoined a WI law that curtails public employees’ bargaining rights, on the grounds that the state’s open-meetings law was violated when the Republican leaders moved the bill through committee without giving a 24-hour public notice, The Wall Street Journal reports:

 

Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a statement, "The Supreme Court is going to have the ultimate ruling."

 

The state Supreme Court, which had been petitioned by Republicans to block the temporary injunction Ms. Sumi issued in March, will hear arguments June 6 before deciding whether to intervene. Republicans could wait for the Supreme Court to rule, or they could attempt to pass the bill again, either on its own or as part of the state budget.

 

The bill would limit collective-bargaining rights for most of the state's public employees. They would have to contribute more out of their paychecks for health insurance and pensions, and it would become tougher for unions to retain members.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Multiculturalism: Jihad By Other Means): Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron of England continues to insist that talk-radio host Michael Savage repudiate “statements made on his broadcasts that were deemed a threat to public security” before he is allowed to enter the country WorldNetDaily reports:

 

In the latest communiqué from the British government, Michael Atkins, writing on behalf of the U.K.'s treasury solicitor, told Savage's London-based attorney, "Your client has not provided any evidence to show that he did not commit the unacceptable behaviour" that prompted the "decision to exclude him, nor has your client provided any acceptable evidence to show his repudiation of those unacceptable behaviours."

 

Atkins said Savage can do nothing at the moment to affect his status and must wait until December, when the decision is scheduled for review.

 

Responding to the lastest development, Savage pointed to Cameron and President Obama, during his current trip to the U.K., comparing themselves with President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher, "blathering about 'democracy' in the Arab world."

 

"How about democracy in the U.K.?" asked Savage, referring to his case. "The freedom to a trial? The freedom of appeal? The freedom to set the record straight?

 

"Why does the Cameron government protect Muslim terrorists and Muslim hate-preachers who espouse the overthrow of the British government, democracy itself, while banning Michael Savage from entering the land of their better forefathers?" he asked.

 

Savage has received support from Reps. Allen West, R-Fla., and John Culberson, R-Texas, who sent letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging her to review Britain's ban.

 

WND points out that the U.K. has never specified which of Savage’s utterances were thought to be unacceptable "to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to intercommunity violence," which was the original reason for putting him on the banned-entry list.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Obama Administration’s Tactless Diplomatic Debut): Apparently the White House Social Secretary who replaced clueless Chicago crony Desirée Rogers did a much better job in selecting the obligatory head-of-state gifts that President Barack Hussein Obama presented to Queen Elizabeth and members of the royal family this time around, reports The Washington Times during his second trip to the U.K.:

 

After stumbling in his first gift exchange with the Brits two years ago, President Obama by all accounts redeemed himself Tuesday when he presented Queen Elizabeth II with a handmade, leather album of rare memorabilia chronicling her parents’ 1939 visit to the U.S.

 

Similarly, Mr. Obama’s official gifts to other members of the royal family - a custom-made set of Fell Pony bits and shanks for the Duke of Edinburgh, plants and seeds from various U.S. landmarks, such as Mount Vernon, for the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall - appeared to rehabilitate a much-maligned track record when it comes to British heads of state.